When she (Seetha) became exhausted with crying, she realized that crying would not help. She, therefore decided to try one more time to convince her guards. With a voice indistinct due to tears, Seetha told her guards "Please understand that a human woman is neither suited not slated to become a wife of an ogre. If you do not agree, all of you can eat me according to your desire. I will not agree to what you ask me."
Noting that her appeal did not make any mark on the rakshashis guarding her, Seetha washing her wide breasts with a flow of tears from her eyes, resumed her crying.
Seetha was crying like a mad one. She started blabbering "While Rama was away (lured away by Mareecha), I was overpowered and brought over here by the rakshash Ravana who can wear any desired form. Being under the control of ogresses, being frightened very horribly, thinking and being tormented by grief, I do not desire to live. Without Rama and living in the midst of these ogresses, there is no point to continue to live; not with wealth, not with ornaments. Is my heart made of iron? It appears so else it would have burst and released me from this torment.
"Why should I live separated from my lord Rama? Without my husband Rama who is also the lord of the earth with the ocean at the end, a pleasant talker, I now have no interest in life or in comfort. I will leave this body. Let it be split into pieces or let it be eaten. I cannot tolerate this misery any more.
"I will not touch even with my left foot that Ravana an ogre of reprehensible conduct. What to say of desiring him.
"Rama the man par excellence is famous, is a wise man, is compassionate with a good conduct. By whom alone fourteen thousand ogres have been destroyed. Why that Rama has not yet come to rescue me? I am imprisoned with little strength by that rakshash Ravana. My husband is surely capable of killing that scum Ravana. By which Rama Viradha, one of the most powerful ogres, has been killed in Dandaka forest, why he has not yet come here?
"This city of Lanka being in the middle of ocean may be difficult to be attacked. But there will not be any obstacle to the flying of Rama's arrows. What now is that reason by which Rama the most courageous has not yet got out of this confinement his dear wife stolen by an ogre.
"I am sure that kind bird Jatayu must have lived to convey Rama about my abduction. A great deed has been done by that Jatayu, trying to protect me, despite his old age, fighting a duel with Ravana. If Rama knows me to be living here, with anger he will make the world to be without any ogre with his arrows now. Rama will blow away the city of Lanka, will dry up the great ocean, will destroy the name and fame of Ravana.
"Thereafter just like me crying in this way, in a short time, in very house, the wives of rakshashas killed in battle by Rama will cry again and again. Rama together with Lakshmana will make the city of Lanka devoid of ogres. An enemy seen by those two will indeed not live even for a moment longer. This Lanka shortly will become a graveyard, with paths agitated with smoke of funeral pyres, crowded with groups of vultures.
"Oh! I wonder whether that Rama the strong man with red eye corners knows me to be a captive of Ravana. These meat eating ogres do not know any virtue. An ogre will definitely eat me for breakfast.
"Now if someone gives me poison here, I without husband quickly will see the god Yama. Maybe Rama does not know me to be alive. If those two know me to be alive, then it cannot be said that they will not do any search for me.
"To me who is deprived of Rama, death is good. Or those two brothers giving up weapons in the forest may have become dwellers of forest eating roots and fruits. Or Rama and Lakshmana may have been killed by that evil rakshash Ravana by deceit. Under such circumstances, I do not have any course other than taking recourse to death. But alas! even in this grief, death is not bestowed on me. Nevertheless I will somehow embrace death." =========================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment